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Where Have You Been Arnold Friend Character Analysis

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In the story "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?", Joyce Carol Oates does an outstanding job on creating an element of bone chilling and goosebumps when reading it. Arnold Fiend, or as he likes to introduce to people as Friend, is a demon in disguise as he represents himself as goat like by his appearance, how he knows everything about Connie, the 15 year old protagonist, even when he just met her, and by how his car symbolizes himself and religion too. Simple things in the story like numbers and flies can mean more than what they are. Arnold Friend first appears when Connie is hanging out with her friends and a guy named Eddie, who is giving her attention just as she likes it. She describes Arnold as "a boy with shaggy black hair in a convertible jalopy painted gold" (Oates 1098). Weeks pass by that event and Connie was alone listening to her music which helps her keep calm. She …show more content…

For example, while taking to her about whatnot stuff, he mentions her name and Connie didn’t even introduce herself yet. Furthermore, Arnold starts mentioning facts about her stating "I know your name and all about you, lots of things..." while then saying he knows her so well because of her friends (Oates 1102). He then starts listing each of the friends that supposedly gave him information about Connie. Moreover, Connie starts to worry that is her father sees Arnold and Ellie in her property that there will be trouble. However, Arnold states by saying "He ain’t coming. He's at the Barbeque" (Oates 1104). He then starts describing what her parents are doing at the barbeque and what Connie's sister is wearing. How can one know everything about a person only to have meet them that exact day? It’s strange, really. I mean the only thing that comes up to my mind is if he was a physic, a demon, or a god. However, by the looks of it, it seems to me he might just be a

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At the end of "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” I believe that Connie is a normal girl. Although Connie is illustrated as a self-indulgent and vein teenager I did see anything that stood out in the text with lead me to believe that she was particularly evil. The same goes for her being a good girl she didn’t do anything that I found profoundly good. The fact the Arnold Friend scares Connie into coming with him is a cause for concluding that he is evil.

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Connie enjoyed going to the mall with her friends, and meeting boys at her local diner. One night, on the way back to her home, she passed a man with black hair in a golden car, who later showed up at her doorstep and introduced himself as Arnold Friend. He attempts to convince her to come out and take a drive with him, and after a long period of time and the eventual breakdown of Connie, he succeeds. The author of this story uses foreshadowing and symbolism to develop the theme that your decisions can affect the course of your life.

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In the story, Connie meets somebody who goes by the name Arnold Friend, who possesses many strange traits and contains an unnatural amount of knowledge about Connie. There has been much

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The source, “Joyce Carol Oates’s ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ as Pure Realism”, that Connie had made it clear in the story that Arnold had been watching her for a while and implied that because of that, he used what he knew about her narcissistic attitude to guess how she felt about her sister (Coulthard). Connie’s naive desires also contributed to her compliance with Arnold’s orders. The story constantly showed Connie daydreaming of love, diversion, and boys which ultimately caused her judgement to fog when Arnold arrived at her house to tempt her into leaving. The source, “‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’

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And high heels” (Oates 71-71). At this point, in the short story, it is apparent that Arnold Friend is not an average person. Nobody can see exactly what everyone is doing and what they are wearing making it apparent Arnold is not a friend at all but a monster. The author also gives Arnold Friend the ability to alter one's thought process through music and his words. When Connie is around Arnold she felt “a wave of dizziness rise in her”

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As we know, the devil was jealous of the God, so by calling Connie his lover, he was gaining his own bride. Also, on 325, Arnold verbalizes “This place you are now- inside you daddy’s house- is nothing but a cardboard box I can knock down any time.” In other words, homogeneous to Satan, Arnold had an abundance of power to make you question the existence of good things, such as as a savior or

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Oates’s biography explained her fiction writing as a mixture violence and sexual obsession. The writing style definitely fits the plot point of this story with both of her literary ingredients being present in not only Arnold Friend but in Connie as well. The Protagonist Connie is presented in a very self-centered way. She is obsessed with her looks and often fantasizes about all the boys she meets.

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As Gretchen Schulz and R.J.R. Rockwood put it, “Toward Arnold friend and what he represents, Connie is ambivalent: she is both fascinated and frightened. She is after all, at that confusing age when girls feels, thinks, and acts both like a child, put off by a possible lover, and like a woman, attracted to him”(577). In other words, Connie’s actions are led by her shallow emotions and desires. Her intuition warns

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He mysteriously knows where Connie lives and invites himself to drive over to her house. Arnold assumes Connie’s friendship by convincing her that he knows everything and everybody, “I know your name and all about you” (Oates 201) when she never told him her name in the first place. He knew her friends, their names as well as what she did the night before. He also knew exactly where Connie’s family was, at a BBQ at Connie’s aunt Tille’s.

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